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Google +Local NAP Info Pulling From Mapmaker (not Places?)

It appears to me that Plus and Places are going to live on the same layer of Google’s business data index–one layer ABOVE Mapmaker–further evidence to support the theory that today was an interface update only and does not affect anything back-end is below.

Some of you may know that I moved last summer. Embarrassingly, I still haven’t gotten around to updating my NAP information on all the important sites.

I did, however, update my address at Google Places relatively recently (at least I think that’s when I updated it…January 17…it could have been more recently than that).

Needless to say, I was surprised to see that my new +Local Page was still showing my old address:

Curious, I next went to Mapmaker:

Yup, still showing my old address.

The lesson here: if you need an urgent update to your NAP info on the new +Local Pages, you may be SOL while Google finishes rolling out these changes. But definitely check Mapmaker if you haven’t already. You could also try the new “Edit this data” screen if you haven’t yet.

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Agreed, I think we’re all pretty much stuck for the time being on Local Pages. Some recent blog posts and colleagues have indicated that we’re all pretty much “locked out” of making changes at this time until the transition is fully migrated (Local Places to Google+ Local).

My concern is that Google stated that Place owners would still have the opportunity to edit the content being displayed for their businesses on Google+ Local, but if they aren’t using the verified details, what’s the point? That doesn’t support the idea of giving users the most accurate information. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/localnow-with-dash-of-zagat-and.html

Hm, I am not perfectly convinced that the info is being taken by Map Maker itself. I think both Map Maker and Places, and now +Local are simply different representations of what Google has as business information at its back end. There seem to be different factors that Google values in different ways when representing this data across its multiple front end platforms. It is very possible that some data might appear the same way in Map Maker and Google Places, but at the same time to be presented erroneously in the Local Plus Box (which seems to be largely triggered by the local data Google has for the business).

From my very small scale observations and research, what Google was representing in Places was very strongly affected by what the business owner presented as information. However, the data displayed in Map Maker is much closer to what Google has as business data coming from third-party places (and by third-party I mean anything other than the business owner themselves, i.e. including the business website). It appears that Google is taking the same factors into account when displaying data in Google+ Local currently. One more reason for me to believe that the GP dashboard is going to either be completely removed in the very near future, or be somehow merged with a G+ dashboard with the main control being in the G+ dashboard and the GP dashboard simply delivering some historical data such as analytics, or offers control, for instance.

I don’t think that this is necessarily something *new* related to where Google+ Local is pulling data from vs. where it used to pull data from for Places listings. As I’m sure you know, you can still access old Places pages if you get clever with HOW you search and your old listing is showing that same information:

It’s possible that they did change where they’re pulling the NAP data from, so it’s feeding out the same way to both the old and new style pages, but I’m NOT sure we can say for certain given the problems Places has had, especially in recent months, with updating listings after changes were clearly made in the back-end.

I’ve often suspected this had more to do with citations – Google saying “you claim to have moved, but your other citations say you haven’t” – so my first instinct is that this is what’s going on here. I mean, you have an owner verified listing – why would Google think Map Maker NAP info is more accurate than your most recent changes? Then again, why does Google do a lot of what they do?

I’m sure these tools will all someday integrate, but right now I pity anyone who has to create and manage a large batch of new listings. Unfortunately that might be me soon. I like all the pretty new buttons and knobs Google is rolling out for us to use, but there are just so danged many of them right now.

@Randy: Google’s NAP data has sometimes been a lot more accurate than some of our clients’. Sad, but true. I can’t really blame Google for making that call.

Thanks Dave for the post, I have the same problem. I am working my way through the local citations work sheet (from getlisted Edmonton). I just reconfirmed my address, to get NAP consistency across citations, via google places via post card. Next day the change and GOOG is pulling data from about two changes ago. Now I wonder if my confirmed update will get lost in some transition of databases. Will be interesting to see when or if the data change gets captured.

UPDATE: After reading this blog post I went back to my Google+Local Page and It has captured my Google places Confirmation from earlier this week just this morning, it was still wrong last night. My NAP is the old address is (with incorrect suite number) still displayed in Map Maker. (something I have never touched till 5 minutes ago)

Recently, I stumbled across a situation on Google+ Local where there is an additional phone # appearing… Have you been been able to research or maybe you have some insight as to where this organic feature is coming from?

The ‘organically’ generated phone # is incorrect and has not been utilized by the business in quite some time. In addition, the business is utilizing a Data Distributor to help control LLM.

Any insight/help would be much appreciated. If you would need to reference the exact Google+ Local Page, please contact me and I will be sure to provide that to you.